GOP points to taxes in rejecting immigration bill

It’s the latest reason House Republicans say they can’t support the Senate-passed immigration bill: Taxes.

Rep. Dave Camp, the influential House Ways and Means Committee chairman, said Thursday the Senate immigration bill is unconstitutional because it raises revenue. The Constitution requires revenue bills to originate in the House.

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“The Senate bill is unconstitutional, as it includes a number of revenue-related measures such as fees, penalties, surcharges and the non-payment of taxes,” Camp (R-Mich.) said in a statement. “As such, any consideration of the Senate bill in the House would also be unconstitutional. The House will have to consider its own legislation.”

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) last month urged House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to use the so-called “blue slip” process to reject the Senate bill and allow the House to craft its own immigration legislation. Given his role as the top tax writer in the House, Camp’s comments could raise the prominence of such arguments.

House Republicans have avoided taking up the Senate-passed immigration legislation since it passed in June and have instead suggested they will move ahead with a series of piecemeal bills.

Still, House leaders can — and do — maneuver their way around the Constitutional questions surrounding revenue bills when they want to. And Senate Democrats said they could do so now.

“If the House Republican leadership gets to the point that they want to vote on the Senate bill, all they would have to do is copy and paste [the legislation]…and rename it as H.R.,” a Senate Democratic aide told POLITICO. This is “not an insurmountable obstacle in anyway.”

Camp outlined five instances where the Senate bill raises revenue. He said the mandate that some fines and fees go into the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Trust Fund – which is meant to pay for border security and implementation of the legislation – is inherently a revenue provision.

The provision in the Senate bill preventing non-citizens from collecting the premium tax credits included in the Affordable Care Act would also result in a “revenue effect,” Camp’s release said.

And forcing agriculture employers to not pay or withhold incomes taxes from paychecks would reduce federal revenues, Camp’s office argued.

”This would reduce federal revenues otherwise collected, thus is a revenue measure for purposes of the [Constitution’s] origination clause,” the release said.